03.07.2018

CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL NEGINT Brasília, 03 de julho de 2018

Índice I. OMC _______________________________________________ 2 Trump says WTO needs to change ways or U.S. ‘will be doing something’ ___ 2 Russia becomes 7th WTO member to challenge Trump tariffs _____________ 3 II. NEGOCIAÇÕES REGIONAIS E BILATERAIS _________________ 5 Canada’s tricky dance with global trade ______________________________ 5 49 AU members have signed free trade pact: AU chairperson _____________ 7 III. OUTROS ____________________________________________ 8 Horas decisivas para Europa y Mercosur ______________________________ 8 BRAZIL: DI Rates Close Lower Amid Reduced Liquidity, Waiting For Data ___ 10

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I. OMC Trump says WTO needs to change ways or U.S. ‘will be doing something’ The Globe and Mail (Canadá) U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to take action against the World Trade Organization on Monday after media reports said he wanted to withdraw from the global trade regulator. Trump has complained frequently that the United States is treated unfairly in global trade and has sharply criticized the WTO for letting that happen. “WTO has treated the United States very badly and I hope they change their ways. They have been treating us very badly for many, many years and that’s why we were at a big disadvantage with the WTO,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “And we’re not planning anything now, but if they don’t treat us properly we will be doing something,” he said. News website Axios last week reported that the Republican president wants to withdraw from the WTO, drawing a prompt denial on Friday from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Axios reported on Sunday that Trump, who has made fighting unfair trade rules a pillar of his presidency, has ordered that legislation be written stipulating a WTO withdrawal. But Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, said earlier on Monday it was too soon for the United States to discuss any withdrawal from the World Trade Organization. “WTO knows some reforms are needed. I think there really is a need to update and synchronize its activities, and we’ll see where that leads,” Ross told CNBC. “But I think it’s a little premature to talk about simply withdrawing from it. “We’ve made no secret of our view that there are some reforms needed at the WTO,” Ross said. Trump’s aggressive stance on trade has roiled U.S. relations with allies and trading partners from Europe to China. He pulled out of negotiations for the Trans-Pacific 2

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Partnership shortly after taking office last year and began renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with neighbors Canada and Mexico. More recently, he imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imported into the United States from various countries and is set to impose tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese imports beginning on Friday.

Russia becomes 7th WTO member to challenge Trump tariffs Politico (Bélgica) Russia has requested talks with the United States on President Donald Trump’s decision to impose new duties on steel and aluminum, the first step in formally challenging the action at the World Trade Organization. The complaint filed Monday is the seventh initiated by a WTO member against Trump’s steel and aluminum duties, following cases brought by China, India, the European Union, Canada, Mexico and Norway. Collectively, they put the administration on a potential collision course with the rulesbased world trading system forged by the United States and its allies, but which Trump believes is now biased against Washington. Moscow’s move comes as the Trump administration is mulling additional tariffs on auto imports in the name of national security, and as Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet later this month. Russia claims the U.S. duties of 25 percent and 10 percent on imports of steel and aluminum products, respectively, are inconsistent with provisions of the WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 and the Agreement on Safeguards. The Trump administration imposed the duties under Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, which allows a president to restrict imports to protect national security. It also argues its actions are consistent with a 1982 legal decision on the use of Article XXI

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of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which provides countries the right to restrict trade to protect national security. In that decision, the European Union, Canada and Australia restricted imports from Argentina for national security reasons because of the Falklands War. At the time, the U.S. sided with the three governments, asserting that the provision left it up to a nation to define its national security interests and that other trading partners “had no power to question that judgment.” However, rather than accept the U.S. national security rationale for the steel and aluminum duties, other WTO members are treating the restrictions as emergency “safeguard” restrictions. Such restrictions are allowed under WTO rules but must meet certain criteria to pass muster. Steel safeguard restrictions imposed by former President George W. Bush in 2002 were struck down by the WTO. The EU, Canada, Mexico, China and others have also retaliated against the U.S. steel and aluminum duties, arguing they are entitled to take such steps because the United States did not compensate them for imposing safeguard restrictions. Last week, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer accused WTO members who have retaliated against the United States of distorting the rules to suit their purposes. “President Trump has taken actions on trade in steel and aluminum to protect our national security interests. These actions are wholly legitimate and fully justified, both as a matter of U.S. law and WTO rules. By contrast, the European Union has concocted a groundless legal theory to justify immediate tariffs on U.S. exports. Other WTO members, including China, have adopted a similar approach,” Lighthizer said in a statement. Still, Lighthizer’s argument struck many as strained since the Trump administration is accused of abusing the Section 232 statute to find a national security threat from steel and aluminum imports. “This is doublespeak right out of ‘1984,’” Bill Reinsch, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a new column. “We took the first step and hit them with tariffs of questionable legality, and now it’s their fault for responding in kind — also with questionable legality? Our contempt for the system encourages others’

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contempt for the system. This would be funny if there weren’t so many people that are going to lose their jobs as a result of the president’s action.”

II. NEGOCIAÇÕES REGIONAIS E BILATERAIS Canada’s tricky dance with global trade The Globe and Mail (Canadá) The pithiest maxim on Canada’s dilemma within North America has seldom seemed truer than it is today; that Canada is “a regional power without a region.” The phrase often gets attributed to Allan Gotlieb, who was Canada’s ambassador to the United States during the Reagan era, when the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement was negotiated. But Mr. Gotlieb thinks it was most likely coined by Dean Acheson, the scion of a preeminent Toronto family who went on to be secretary of state under Harry Truman. Mr. Acheson called his memoir Present at the Creation, meaning creation of the postwar global institutions that are now under unprecedented strain. Regardless of authorship, Canada’s challenge is well described in those few words. The Canadian and U.S. economies have become much more integrated over the past generation to the benefit of both countries. But it’s a relationship that also is radically asymmetrical. Meanwhile, Canada has failed time and again to reach beyond North America effectively – to create economic “counterweights,” to use Pierre Trudeau’s term. If Europe suffers from too much political architecture, North America suffers from too little. U.S. President Donald Trump’s unilateral invocation of national security to impose tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, in an apparent effort to blackmail Canada into signing an unsatisfactory successor to the North American free-trade agreement, is evidence enough of that. From the vantage point of today, the relationship looks a little like the old business fable about breakfast. The United States is the chicken: it donated

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the eggs. Canada is the pig: we “donated” the bacon. The point being, the chicken is involved in the relationship; the pig is committed. So what to do? Be guided by evidence. First, Canadian exports represent close to one-third of Canada’s GDP and about 75 per cent of those exports go to the United States. (It was 85 per cent in 2001 and as high as 90 per cent in Ontario, meaning Canada has broadened its trade recently.) Meanwhile, U.S. exports represent barely 10 per cent of U.S. GDP and less than one-fifth of those exports go to Canada. In other words, Canada depends on the United States to buy about one-quarter of its production; the United States depends on Canada to buy about one-fiftieth of its output. We certainly should emphasize that no other country matters as much to the U.S. economy as Canada. But, frankly, no single country matters all that much to the U.S. economy. Second, Canadian exports to the rest of the world have been increasing more rapidly than to the United States, but they still pale in comparison. China – the sine qua non of Canadian trade diversification – only buys about $20-billion a year of Canadian goods and services. That’s barely 5 per cent of what Canada sells to the United States. Canada’s energy exports to the United States alone approach the total value of what Canada sells to every other country combined. We certainly should work to expand our trade beyond the United States. But it’s hard to foresee a time when Canada’s trade is truly diversified in any meaningful sense of the word – even if recently signed agreements with the European Union and the countries of the Trans-Pacific Partnership take full effect. As an example, Canada is taking advantage of a free-trade agreement with South Korea – but Canada also has an economy the size of South Korea right next door: New York State. So what to do? It’s tempting at a moment when the main event seems to be shifting to a match between the two heavyweights – the United States and China – to sit and watch. But the President may well shift his focus back to Canada soon enough with tariffs on our own “main event” – automotive exports. Canada, then, should take Mr. Trump up on his “offer.” Amid the sturm und drang of the Group of Seven summit in Quebec, the President equated fair trade with tariff-free and 6

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subsidy-free trade. He said a lot of things, of course, and he likely meant free trade – if at all – only in the limited circumstances of countries with similarly structured economies. But no two countries are more similarly structured, and more complementary in their structures, than Canada and the United States. And consider that the average tariff applied by Canada is only half that applied by the United States – 0.8 per cent versus 1.6 per cent. We’d benefit more than they would. This negotiating move would raise in Ottawa all sorts of domestic challenges, most obviously with the supply-managed agriculture sector but possibly with more important sectors, too – such as banking, telecom and insurance – now protected by measures such as foreign ownership restrictions. But supply management, in particular, has been allowed to damage our trade relations, not just on this continent but globally as well, for far too long. Canada could have been part of a fledgling TPP in 2006, but demurred because it would have meant concessions on supply management. It took another decade for Canada to get a second chance. Likewise, Canada was once at the heart of what became the World Trade Organization, a key building block of Mr. Acheson’s postwar architecture. Canada hasn’t been at the centre for some time; Australia, which liberalized its protected agriculture sector years ago, stepped up as we stepped back. Canada has a huge continental challenge maintaining access to the United States, our indispensable market. Canada also has a clear desire to build new trading relationships while doing what we can to protect the postwar international order. We need to do it all, but we won’t be able to do so without making sensitive concessions of our own.

49 AU members have signed free trade pact: AU chairperson Global Times (China) Forty-nine members of the African Union have signed the African continental free trade area (AfCFTA) agreement, said AU chairperson Paul Kagame on Monday. Kagame, who is also the Rwandan president, made the announcement in Nouakchott during the closing ceremony of the 31st summit of the 55-member African Union. 7

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South Africa, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Lesotho and Burundi signed the AfCFTA in Nouakchott. Chad and Swaziland ratified the agreement, which brings the total number of ratification to six. A minimum of 22 ratifications are required to enable the AfCFTA to come into force, while 15 ratifications for the protocol on free movement of persons, right of residence and right of establishment. The AfCFTA will be the largest free trade area since the formation of the World Trade Organization, according to the AU. It could create an African market of over 1.2 billion people with a GDP of 2.5 trillion US dollars, according to the pan-African bloc.

III. OUTROS Horas decisivas para Europa y Mercosur El Pais (Uruguai) El próximo lunes, en Bruselas, se definirá la suerte de un proceso que se arrastra, en cámara lenta, desde hace 18 años. Los técnicos de la Unión Europea y del Mercosur podrían aprobar el texto básico de un Tratado de Libre Comercio entre los dos bloques. Si eso ocurre, una semana más tarde los ministros de Relaciones Exteriores suscribirían el capítulo político de ese acuerdo. La demora en alcanzar ese resultado es una señal de los niveles de proteccionismo que imperan a ambos lados del Atlántico. Pero la novedad sería luminosa. Contrastaría contra el repliegue comercial que se verifica en todo Occidente. Sobre todo en los Estados Unidos. Y lo más curioso: sería un éxito diplomático que dos presidentes, Michel Temer y Mauricio Macri, alcanzan desde una gran debilidad. La negociación comercial es una carrera de obstáculos. Ya se había removido el del sector agrícola, centrado en los cupos de carne admitidos por Europa, cuando apareció la resistencia sudamericana a abrir el mercado automotor. La disputa ha sido tan dura que la negociadora de la Unión, Sandra Gallina, ofreció un informe cargado de pesimismo a los europarlamentarios especializados en esta transacción. Encabezados por el español 8

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Ignacio Salafranca, esos legisladores fueron hasta ahora uno de los principales soportes que ha tenido el entendimiento. La reticencia del Mercosur es, sobre todo, de Brasil. Muy comprensible: pone a disposición un mercado gigantesco. Para el caso de los autos, reclama siete años sin tocar el arancel externo actual, del 35%. Del año siete al quince esa barrera iría descendiendo hasta llegar a cero. Durante los primeros siete años se concedería un cupo para que ingresen automóviles europeos con una tarifa del 17,5%. El cupo empezó siendo mínimo: 350 millones de dólares. Europa reclama un statu quo de tres años, no de siete. Y llegar a cero en 10 años, no en 15. Para el período inicial el cupo de exportaciones debería ser mayor. Brasil, Argentina, Paraguay y Uruguay no defienden a las terminales automotrices. Son casi todas europeas. Su preocupación son los autopartistas, que no podrían competir con los del otro lado del Atlántico. Los negociadores de ambos bloques admiten, así y todo, que la diferencia podría superarse. Despejado el problema de los automóviles, aparece un nudo difícil de desatar: la industria farmacéutica, sobre todo la argentina. Los laboratorios europeos se quejan de que patentar un medicamento en la Argentina demanda un trámite infinito. También denuncian ataques a la propiedad intelectual con la fabricación de copias. Es difícil que alguien ceda. Superar este enfrentamiento requerirá de una gran voluntad política. En especial, de Mauricio Macri. No sería su primer conflicto con los laboratorios locales. Ya tuvo uno cuando decidió algo tan sensato como que las compras estatales de remedios se hicieran con concurso de precios. La elaboración del acuerdo debe resolver un inventario interminable de cláusulas destinadas

a

mantener

protecciones:

reglas

de

origen,

normas

fitosanitarias,

denominaciones. Son cercos más o menos elegantes que disimulan que lo que se denomina “libre comercio” es siempre comercio administrado. Los técnicos están presionados por la política. En agosto los brasileños estarán sumergidos en una campaña electoral de dudoso desenlace. En una flamante encuesta de CNI/Ibope, Jair Bolsonaro y Marina Silva son los candidatos con mayor intención de voto. Bolsonaro con un 17% y Marina con un 13%. Ninguno de los dos es un campeón del comercio libre. Por eso es relevante que el tratado sea aprobado antes de que Temer abandone la presidencia de Brasil.

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En la Argentina las elecciones presidenciales serán en octubre del año próximo. Aun así no es inocua una eventual postergación de las negociaciones. La crisis económica que se desencadenó en abril ha puesto en duda la reelección de Macri, que parecía inexorable. Asoma la hipótesis, todavía muy brumosa, de un sucesor peronista. Si esta alternativa se consolida, será sobre una ola de desencanto de las políticas liberalizadoras del actual Gobierno. Un clima desfavorable para un pacto de apertura comercial. Este horizonte incierto explica la premura. Si el próximo lunes se aprueba un esquema mínimo de acuerdo, habrá que esperar por lo menos dos años para que esa innovación tenga efectos prácticos. Todavía falta negociar la letra chica de los aranceles y cupos provisorios. Y que los Parlamentos les den el visto bueno. Esa parsimonia no debe disimular que el tratado representaría un giro copernicano, sobre todo para el Mercosur. Ese bloque, que es uno de los más proteccionistas del planeta, iniciaría un proceso gradual pero sostenido de integración con mercados que le exigirían más competencia y mejor institucionalidad. Grandes conquistas de largo plazo que serían imposibles si en los últimos 10 años no se hubiera producido un cambio relevante en el cono sur: la multiplicación en Brasil de empresas grandes y con capacidad para competir a nivel global, sobre todo en el terreno agroindustrial. Los europeos que alientan el tratado, liderados por los empresarios españoles, que ya tienen gran presencia en el Mercosur, emiten también un mensaje llamativo. Contrastan con el inesperado proteccionismo anglosajón del Brexit y de Donald Trump. Y levantan la bandera de la apertura y la integración frente a las corrientes que, también en Europa continental, predican la clausura.

BRAZIL: DI Rates Close Lower Amid Reduced Liquidity, Waiting For Data Business Insider (Estados Unidos) The one-day interbank deposit futures rates (DI rates) in Brazil ended lower Monday, in a session marked by lower liquidity because of Brazil's match against Mexico in the World Cup. Nevertheless, a slight negative bias prevailed, against the appreciation of the locally

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traded U.S. dollar, with investors adjusting the bets against the Selic before the domestic economic data expected for later this week.

"The curve reacted to specific flows. Nothing is happening in the market," said a fixedincome trader at a national brokerage firm. According to him, the national interest rate curve kept the trend of returning premiums, with investors raising the chances of maintenance of the basic interest rate at August's of the Brazilian Central Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (Copom). At the end of last week, the pricing was little more than 80% odds of a residual increase of 0.25 percentage point (pp) in the Selic next month. According to the trader quoted above, domestic indicators on industrial activity and consumer price inflation should calibrate these bets in the next few days. For the team of SulAmérica Investimentos, these data must "accuse the impacts resulting from the negative shock caused by the truck drivers' strike in the second half of May." The January 2019 DI contract rate was at 6.785%, from 6.83% in the previous settlement, while the January 2020 DI rate ended at 8.28%, from 8.32%. The January 2021 DI contract rate was at 9.25%, from 9.31%.

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